Squire Hawkins, having adjusted his teeth, his wig, and his glass eye, thanked Dr. Small for a suggestion so valuable, and thought best to put John Pearson under arrest before proceeding further.  Mr. Pearson was therefore arrested, and was heard to mutter something about a “passel of thieves,” when the court warned him to be quiet.

Walter Johnson was then called.  But before giving his testimony, I must crave the reader’s patience while I go back to some things which happened nearly a week before and which will serve to make it intelligible.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 28:  This form, bagonet, is not in the vocabularies, but it was spoken as I have written it.  The Century Dictionary gives bagnet, and Halliwell and Wright both give baginet with the g soft apparently, though neither the one nor the other is very explicit in distinguishing transcriptions from old authors from phonetic spellings of dialect forms.  I fancy that this bagonet is impossible as a corruption of bayonet, and that it points to some other derivation of that word than the doubtful one from Bayonne.]

CHAPTER XXX.

“BROTHER SODOM.”

In order to explain Walter Johnson’s testimony and his state of mind, I must carry the reader back nearly a week.  The scene was Dr. Small’s office.  Bud and Walter Johnson had been having some confidential conversation that evening, and Bud had got more out of his companion than that exquisite but weak young man had intended.  He looked round in a frightened way.

“You see,” said Walter, “if Small knew I had told you that, I’d get a bullet some night from somebody.  But when you’re initiated it’ll be all right.  Sometimes I wish I was out of it.  But, you know, Small’s this kind of a man.  He sees through you.  He can look through a door”—­and there he shivered, and his voice broke down into a whisper.  But Bud was perfectly cool, and doubtless it was the strong coolness of Bud that made Walter, who shuddered at a shadow, come to him for sympathy and unbosom himself of one of his guilty secrets.

“Let’s go and hear Brother Sodom preach to-night,” said Bud.

“No, I don’t like to.”

“He don’t scare you?” There was just a touch of ridicule in Bud’s voice.  He knew Walter, and he had not counted amiss when he used this little goad to prick a skin so sensitive.  “Brother Sodom” was the nickname given by scoffers to the preacher—­Mr. Soden—­whose manner of preaching had so aroused Bud’s combativeness, and whose saddle-stirrups Bud had helped to amputate.  For reasons of his own, Bud thought best to subject young Johnson to the heat of Mr. Soden’s furnace.